{"id":6837,"date":"2025-03-08T09:48:23","date_gmt":"2025-03-08T09:48:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/?p=6837"},"modified":"2025-03-08T09:48:23","modified_gmt":"2025-03-08T09:48:23","slug":"another-year-another-iwd-whats-changed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/2025\/03\/08\/another-year-another-iwd-whats-changed\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Year, Another IWD: What’s Changed?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every year International Women\u2019s Day sparks a momentary bout of reflection about the state of women in our society. The\u00a0 House of Lords has an annual debate, for instance, this year about women in STEM<\/a>.\u00a0 Social media will showcase many women\u2019s stories, past and present, highlighting both those known well and those less so. For myself, and I\u2019m sure many like me, multiple invitations turn up on my desk inviting me to give a talk here or there (which typically clash so I cannot accept them all). But does anything fundamentally change?<\/p>\n

At one level the answer is obviously yes. There are more women on FTSE Boards and running universities. The Supreme Court is not all male and about half of Cambridge colleges are now led by women, although some colleges are still at the stage of appointing their first female head (most recently Selwyn<\/a>). Compared with when I was growing up, huge progress has been made. At another level, at the level of inherent attitudes to what men and women can do, there is still too much question about whether women are \u2018up\u2019 to any particular challenge. Leaving aside what is happening on the other side of the Atlantic, one can still see fainter echoes here.<\/p>\n

Take the scrutiny over Rachel Reeves<\/a>\u2019 qualifications as an economist; no one questioned George Osborne\u2019s or Jeremy Hunt’s experience or degree relevance. It is hard not to see this as a double standard being applied to a woman. Such scrutiny implicitly weakens her authority. Or the current anxiety over boys doing less well at school (of course something that everyone should be worried about), compared with decades of indifference when the gender gap was the other way round. I suspect the recent analysis of EPSRC grant data <\/a>that shows that women are much more successful at obtaining fellowships than men (by some 80%; I\u2019m not sure if there is a clear explanation of this yet) may provoke concern, despite the fact that university leadership and the professorial ranks remain stubbornly male, particularly in a subject like my own (Physics).<\/p>\n

I would like to think progress was well and truly being made, but the reality is, when I go to talk \u2013 as I still do \u2013 to groups of young researchers about these issues, the same concerns raise their heads. How do I get taken seriously? What do I do when my supervisor isn\u2019t supportive? Why is it always the women (and the minoritised ethnics) who have to do the heavy lifting in making improvements happen? The very fact that student women\u2019s groups feel the need to invite me to talk about my own experiences is testament to the fact they don\u2019t want to feel alone in what may feel like splendid isolation in some groups. In that sense, no, things have not progressed to the point where these are no longer matters of concern.<\/p>\n

Then there is of course the small matter of the gender pay gap. In the 55 years since the original Equal Pay Act that Barbara Castle introduced in 1970, there is still \u2013 almost universally across sectors \u2013 a significant gender pay gap. Again, yes, it has been decreasing, but it still stands at 7%, according to the last ONS data<\/a>. It has actually increased<\/u> for managers, directors and senior officials, according to the same data. Some, but not all of this, will be down to grade\/role segregation. This is just as true in the supposedly egalitarian Scandinavian countries, as this commentary on Norway <\/a>demonstrates. But we must all worry whether the backlash against DEI initiatives in the USA spills over to our own shores. It is of course right to worry about the numbers of working-class boys becoming NEETS, but that shouldn\u2019t blind us to the fact that girls who do well at school may well find their subsequent progression up the career ladder stalls and that their pay falls behind their male contemporaries.<\/p>\n

The reasons behind these social challenges are many and varied, and initiatives that help one part of our community may not work elsewhere. However, that we live in a society where equal pay for equal work does not automatically fall out from decisions in the workplace \u2013 by managers and HR departments \u2013 is a disgrace. This is not even a case of trying to work out whether \u2018dinner ladies\u2019 and \u2018bin men\u2019 are doing equally skilled jobs (as in the Birmingham City Council tribunal some years ago), but whether two people sitting at adjacent desks doing identical roles get paid the same. If one negotiates on hiring and the other doesn\u2019t (stereotypically male and female traits), the difference in salary may perpetuate and even grow throughout a career, without anyone noticing or indeed intending such a discrepancy.<\/p>\n

And finally, in this IWD rant, if society continues to assume the woman is the primary carer, even when it has been pointed out \u2013 to a school or nursery for instance \u2013 that it is the man who should be contacted in case of an emergency, for instance, we will continue to reinforce these stereotypes. As long as such assumptions are made, by the individual and by society, we are not making the best use of all our talents by looking at the reality not some out-of-date vision of what \u2018should\u2019 be.<\/p>\n

When it comes to International Women\u2019s Day, it is a good moment to pause and think both about how far gender equality has<\/u> progressed, but also how it is stuck. For the specific case of women in STEM, let me do my annual IWD reminder of the list of things <\/a>anyone, whatever their gender, age or occupation, can do to improve the situation for aspiring and practicing female scientists. I originally entitled this Just1Action4WIS (Just one action for women in science) and, although it\u2019s all but ten years old now, it is still as important now as then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every year International Women\u2019s Day sparks a momentary bout of reflection about the state of women in our society. The\u00a0 House of Lords has an annual debate, for instance, this year about women in STEM.\u00a0 Social media will showcase many … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,27],"tags":[1683,439,1682,88],"class_list":["post-6837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-equality","category-women-in-science","tag-barbara-castle","tag-epsrc","tag-equal-pay-act","tag-gender-pay-gap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6837"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6844,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6837\/revisions\/6844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}